The 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies Ever

When Arthur C. Clarke died, science fiction - hell, science in generallost one of its greatest, most forward-looking masters. In his honor, PM's resident geek and sci-fi buff analyzes the most eerily predictive, prescient films of the future.

When Arthur C. Clarke died, science fiction — hell, science in general — lost one of its greatest, most forward-looking masters. In his honor, PM's resident geek and sci-fi buff analyzes the most eerily predictive, prescient films of the future. They're not necessarily the best movies—just the ones that got the science right, or will sometime soon.

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10. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Released: 1968 | Set in the year: 2001
Clarke's biggest contribution to science—the concept of placing satellites in geosynchronous orbit—makes the briefest of cameos in 2001. Despite its place in cinematic history, this movie is a particularly easy target. Once our own timeline slipped past the year 2001, it became obvious that, as measured and bleak as the film's technology seemed at the time, it was a work of strange optimism. Artificial intelligence is still far too dumb to achieve psychosis and getting to the moon—much less Jupiter—seems like as much of a challenge now as it was when Apollo 11 landed there, a year after the movie was released. Still, Clarke and Stanley Kubrick nailed the feel of space travel, and its eventual commercialization, in a way that still resonates today. And HAL 9000's calculated mutiny is plausible enough to ring in any NASA administrator's head, when the time comes—and it will—to consider the role of truly autonomous systems in manned missions.
HITSSpace Tourism: The image is as indelible as those cavemen worshipping at the foot of the monolith: an elegant but strangely familiar-looking craft gliding through space. This was not a muscular rocket ship, but a space plane bearing Pan American's logo, like a jetliner that simply flew higher than the rest. (Clarke and Kubrick's business acumen was far less predictive. Pan Am went under in 1991 and Virgin Airways—much less Virgin Galactic—hadn't yet formulated as an idea in 19-year-old Richard Branson's brain in 1969). The inside of the craft, from the rows of empty seats to the weightless flight attendants, reinforced the feeling of uneventful, commercial air travel. In the year 2008, space tourism is far from casual, but 2001's prediction that one day flying to an orbital space station would require zero training or preparation—and the corresponding outlook Clarke offered PM last year—is gradually coming true.
MISSESArtificial Intelligence: HAL 9000 may be too smart for his own good. He's also too smart, period. In the 60's many AI researchers were extremely optimistic, predicting full machine sentience by the end of the millennium. And HAL's purpose is valid—since much of the crew of Discovery One is in cryogenic sleep during the long trip to Jupiter, an AI could be instrumental to keeping the ship in working order. But in the 40 years since the movie's release, artificial intelligence has been a major disappointment. And any time an autonomous system has the power to kill, such as an armed unmanned vehicle, roboticists are careful to require an authorized human operator to actually pull the trigger, or, in HAL's case, turn off the crew's life support.
Manned Space Exploration: The workings of the various spacecraft in 2001 are ambiguous, but until more efficient propulsion systems can be developed, none of the spaceward jaunts in the film are possible. And if getting to Mars seems like the biggest challenge of the century, imagine planning a trip to Jupiter.
UNDECIDEDVideophones: We have the technology to turn almost every phone on the planet into a full-fledged videophone. But, as it turns out, most people don't want to put on pants to answer the phone. A two-way video feed means devoting your full attention to the conversation, and sacrificing nearly any kind of multitasking, including simply walking down the street. It's possible, though, that video will become a standard option for existing phones, allowing for occasional, but highly optional face-to-face conversations. In other words, users might agree to opt into video, as opposed to constantly opting out. Speculation aside, videophones aren't in high demand now, and probably never will be.

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9. Short Circuit

Released: 1986 | Set in the year: Unspecified (but probably 1986)
Of all the robot movies in the history of science fiction, from classics like Metropolis and The Terminator to more recent, questionable attempts, like Artificial Intelligence: AI, why pick this one? Short Circuit is, by no stretch of the imagination, a fine film. And its protagonist, Johnny Five, isn't helping the case of self-aware robots—it would be a lot more satisfying to blow this mugging, extroverted thing to pieces than to kill an entire platoon of stoic Terminators. But Short Circuit got one thing right, which was the burgeoning field of armed ground robot development. And while Steve Guttenberg's lovable roboticist would prefer his creations engage in peaceful cohabitation with their human masters, his employer, the Nova Corporation, is pushing the machines on the United States military. The plot is too idiotic to recap, and the notion that the robots' primary purpose is to carry nukes behind enemy lines is deliriously weird, but the role of the defense industry in pushing the limits of ground robots is clear. DARPA's Grand and Urban Challenges might seem like the first steps toward robot cars, but it's the Department of Defense that's throwing the competition, and collecting all of the data from the various teams. Even iRobot, makers of the Roomba, relies on military contracts to stay profitable.
HITSAutonomous Military Ground Robots: Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are nowhere near as advanced as the five SAINT (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport) robots in Short Circuit, but their basic construction holds up surprisingly well. They move around on tracked wheels, like the majority of current UGVs, and have sensor-packed heads that look a lot like the autonomous navigation systems planned for the Army's MULE robot. It's unclear why they have arms, much less the incredibly dextrous hands that Johnny Five uses to read books, dance with ladies, etc. Presumably they need some way to carry and detonate nuclear weapons, but it's best not to stare too long into the abyss that is Short Circuit's internal logic, such as it is. It's also unclear just how autonomous the SAINTs are, since Five's sentience is awakened by a lightning bolt. But if the premise is that the military will develop a ground robot that can move autonomously throughout the battlefield and fire at targets with integrated weaponry, then Short Circuit is the unlikely harbinger of the robot-dependent wars to come.
MISSESLasers: Why do the SAINTs have lasers, instead of perfectly lethal rockets or machine guns? This is a common problem when Hollywood fumbles with sci-fi. Instead of running with one or two high-tech concepts, everything becomes fair game. So Blade Runner gets flying cars, the Terminator movies get beam weapons, and Johnny Five is packing a scientific breakthrough that's much more impressive than he is.
UNDECIDEDArtificial Intelligence: Is it worth getting into how simplistic Five's artificial intelligence is? If nothing else, I'd like to know what sort of hard drive he comes with. Those books he reads at breakneck speed have to go through instantaneous optical character recognition and get stored somewhere. Or am I being petty?

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3 of 10

8. Soylent Green

Released: 1973 | Set in the year: 2022
That most blameless of apocalyptic menaces, overpopulation, has been with us for centuries. It compelled Jonathan Swift to write his satirical call for institutionalized cannibalism in the 18th century. And in 1973, Hollywood produced a no-less-sensational (but considerably less satirical) movie about a vastly overpopulated future, where sinister corporate types have resorted to secret, institutionalized cannibalism. Every day is a potential food riot in New York City, but every Tuesday is Soylent Green day, when the latest—and apparently tastiest—flavor of nutrient-rich, plankton-based rations is distributed. Despite that infamous (and unintentionally funny) final line, and despite Charlton Heston, this movie is a surprisingly bleak and unflinching vision of the future. And sure, I get it, the stuff is made out of people. But that revelation won't fix the desiccated environment or shrink the population to manageable levels. The world of Soylent Green is as doomed as its inhabitants are delicious.
HITSClimate Change: Although the potential impact of greenhouse gases on the environment was only beginning to be debated in the early 70s, Soylent Green cut to the chase. More people means more pollution, which means a future that's significantly hotter than the present. It's unlikely that, by 2022, New York City will be mired in year-round summer, but there's no longer any doubt that the climate is changing. And as oil prices continue to climb, the notion that only the rich will have air conditioning, while the middle-class Charlton Hestons of the world literally sweat it out, seems more likely by the day.
MISSESOverpopulation: It's true, the world as a whole is getting more populated. But 40 million New Yorkers by the year 2022? That math has never added up. According to census estimates, the population of New York City was close to 7.9 million in 1970. By 2000, it had climbed to just past 8 million. By 2025, some experts believe it will reach 9 million. In the real world, a million more people can make impossible situations even worse. Subways get more packed, traffic grinds to an absolute halt, and the electrical grid faces unprecedented peak loads. And 40 million could destroy a city like New York. But getting to 40 million in the next 100 years, much less the next 10 or 20, is a stretch even for science fiction.
Industrial Cannibalism: Corporations can sometimes be vile. And human beings, on rare occasion, eat other human beings. But the urge to dine on the so-called "long pig" is a private matter, reserved for plane crash survivors and the criminally insane. To think that any corporation is capable of planning, orchestrating and keeping a lid on an operation as massive as Soylent Green is to have a conspiracy theorist's view of human competence. Then there's the government's complicity, since at least some portion of the bodies are provided by the euthanasia clinics. I'm not saying that corporations and public servants would necessarily draw the line at cannibalism—who knows what anyone would do faced with this sort of apocalypse? But they would never expect to get away with it.
UNDECIDEDGovernment-Sanctioned Suicide: If the world were, in fact, pushed to the brink of destruction by rampant overpopulation, would public opinion toward suicide change? Hard to say, but the idea that the government would actually promote euthanasia—a concept that also shows up in Children of Men—isn't as easy to shoot down as human-fortified snacks. In Soylent Green, the suicidal are provided with a clean, comfortable room. As the poison kicks in, a montage of nature footage plays, accompanied by your choice of music. Never mind the fact that your body is then unceremoniously dumped into a garbage truck and carted off to a heavily-guarded person-milling factory. Considering that the alternative is a world increasingly packed with sweaty Charlton Hestons, this might not be the worst—or least plausible—way to go.

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4 of 10

7. Blade Runner

Released: 1982 | Set in the year: 2019
It's not that Blade Runner actually predicted much of anything. But it has the flavor of effortless, worldly prescience. This is a future that's both ravaged and fully functional. And in 10 years, the skies over Los Angeles might be worse, and climate change could mean weather systems that are heavier than we ever expected, even in sunny Southern California. But things probably won't be quite so apocalyptic, and there certainly won't be replicants with implanted memories. However, on a rainy day in any of the world's biggest cities, life has looked a lot like Blade Runner for years. From the blinding video billboards in Manhattan's Times Square and Tokyo's Shinjuku district to the sheer crush of human beings and crawling traffic, all we're missing are those neon-handled umbrellas.
HITSUrban Development: Everything feels old in Blade Runner. No one is marveling at the building-size projection of a geisha, because the damn thing has probably been there for years. The traffic clogging the streets is a gridlock like any other, only now there are even more cars cramming into the same insufficient roadways. And despite the packed-in, overcrowded streets, the movie's climax takes place in the city's crumbling, abandoned places, in hallways and on rooftops rotted through with water. The world isn't about to end in Blade Runner, but it's not getting any cleaner, or more efficient. It's just getting older.
MISSESReplicants: There's no delicate way of putting this: We can barely clone a sheep without killing it, much less grow a human outside of the womb. Clones tend to be frail things with persistent health problems. The only thing they have in common with the biological androids in Blade Runner is a shortened life span. To achieve a fully manufactured humanoid creature that's injected with memories and force-grown in order to reach physical and emotional adulthood in a more manageable time frame is as feasible as breaking the speed of light.
Off-World Colonies: The purpose of the replicants is to work—and occasionally fight—in space, on dangerous off-world mining colonies. No details are provided, but they wouldn't help. The only extraterrestrial mining colony in our future is on the moon, and whether we'll even get there by 2019 is still up for debate.
UNDECIDEDFlying Cars: It's to the movie's credit that the flying cars in Blade Runner seem so commonplace. The drivers wear headsets, and check with air traffic control, and seem to avoid unnecessary shenanigans. This is how flying cars should work, if they were at all plausible. Unfortunately (or, depending on how much you trust your fellow drivers, very fortunately) flying cars that operate as regular cars as well as aircraft, with full vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) capabilities, have yet to reach first-generation status, much less the kind of mature product that police officers would be able to use in densely populated areas. But if a company called Urban Aeronautics can get its act together, and deliver its VTOL-capable, $3 million X-Hawk by 2010, flying squad cars might become a little less ridiculous. What Blade Runner gets right is the potential customers. Price and security restrictions are likely to keep the first flying cars out of reach for private pilots. Initial customers could include emergency responders, the military and law enforcement. If everything falls into place, including massive demand and an even more massive boost to police budgets, VTOL patrol vehicles could happen. Not by 2019, but possibly not long after.

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5 of 10

6. The Running Man

Released: 1987 | Set in the year: 2019
The movies that have the biggest cultural impact aren't necessarily the best ones. In fact, sometimes they're among the most embarrassing. The Running Man envisions a decaying 21st-century America, where Arnold Schwarzenegger's police chopper pilot is falsely accused of opening fire on a crowd of hungry rioters. He had actually refused to pull the trigger, but with a sprinkling of computer wizardry, re-edited footage of the incident shows him maniacally gunning down unarmed civilians. He's then put on the highest-ranked TV show in the country, where convicts try to outrun a team of hulking "Stalkers"—heavily-branded characters with signature weapons and comic book names like Buzzsaw (who uses a chainsaw) and Sub-zero (a razor-sharp hockey stick).
HITSReality Game Shows:American Gladiators debuted in 1989, two years after Running Man was released (and it has recently returned on NBC). Although it was presumably a competition between paired-off contestants, the syndicated show featured a cast of hulking "Gladiators" with names like Nitro, Ice and Laser. They alternately tackled contestants, bashed them with giant Q-tip-like sticks, and fired at their heads with tennis-ball launchers. And while no one was killed on American Gladiators—though one competitor suffered a detached retina after being beaned with a tennis ball—the era of vicious and borderline exploitative reality-game shows was born. Hopefully TV will never get as gruesome as this movie predicts, but as the number of television channels spirals toward the infinite, the lowest common denominator channel may one day be only a click away.
MISSESVideo Editing: Special effects, and computer-generated imagery in particular, have become extremely sophisticated. The most deceptive effects involve addition and reduction, as panoramic landscapes are digitally chroma-keyed behind actors filmed on green screen, and people and cars are stripped out of a bustling cityscape. But manipulating living beings with CGI requires software and CPUs from the far side of Futureland. Human speech and expressions are—for now—impossible to code from scratch. If the fake footage of Arnold's atrocity were simply a matter of creative editing, the premise of this movie might work. Pasting his bug-eyed laughter from, say, the Police Athletic League's annual volleyball tournament is almost feasible. But assuming that we'll reach this level of digital fabrication in the next ten years is silly, even by this movie's standards.

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6 of 10

5. Destination Moon

Released: 1950 | Set in the year: Unspecified
Perhaps the most boring movie ever made about space travel, Destination Moon is remarkable because of what it wasn't. In one of those inexplicable Hollywood horse races, this was one of two movies released in 1950 about man's first trip to the moon. First came Rocketship X-M, in which, when the eponymous rocket runs out of fuel halfway to the moon, it somehow grinds to a halt in the vacuum of space. The craft ultimately lands on Mars (don't ask why), where the crew discovers a bustling civilization, yada yada yada. Destination Moon, on the other hand, is a tale of astronauts obeying Newtonian physics. The dramatic climax comes when the crew realizes they don't have enough fuel to make it back to Earth, and even after dumping all of their unessential gear, one of them will have to stay behind. Trust me when I say you won't care who dies, and that fighting some moon men with deadly moon spears would have been a far better finale.
HITSRealistic Spaceflight: At its best, Destination Moon is an astonishingly sober primer on the physics, and potential complications, of space travel. When the crew takes off, an extended sequence (they're all extended, really) shows the effects of acceleration on their grimacing faces. When its time for a spacewalk, the astronauts put on their suits and wait, and wait, as the air cycles out of the crew compartment. It's all very scientific and responsible-the educational equivalent of spinach slathered with milk of magnesia. For what it's worth, the moon also looks remarkably like it should. And when the rocket first leaves Earth, the crew counts down from 30. There is such a thing as too much realism.
Commercial Interest in Space: The premise of the movie-private investors banding together to build the first manned moon rocket-is obviously dopey. But envisioning any level of commercial interest in space was revolutionary in 1950, particularly when the pulp legacy of serials like Flash Gordon was still so prominent.
UNDECIDEDNuke-Powered Rockets: Tempting as it is to criticize Destination Moon for its nuclear-powered rocket, the potential for nukes to provide both thrust and onboard power has been actively pursued for years. In fact, a nuke-powered manned vehicle has been proposed for the mission to Mars.

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7 of 10

4. The Truman Show

Released: 1998 | Set in the year: Unspecified (probably an alternate timeline)The Truman Show is a kind of cinematic chimera. It's part comedy, part drama, straddling the line between science fiction and modern-day fairy tale. Set in a fictional world where the most popular show is a 24-hour-feed of a single, painfully average guy, there's nothing blatantly predictive about the movie. But like The Running Man before it, it's hard to deny the impact The Truman Show has had on pop culture, and especially on TV producers. Arriving just before the explosion of reality television, the intentionally over-the-top story still echoes today. Purchased by a corporation as an infant, Truman's entire life has been a televised lie, with millions watching every one of his manufactured tragedies and triumphs. Mostly, though, Truman simply lives, and the show's popularity is its straightforward voyeurism. And, like Big Brother, Survivor, and every other reality show on the air, none of his environment is actually real.
HITSReality TV: It's easy to chalk up the debut of Big Brother a year after Truman's cinematic release to coincidence. And MTV's The Real World debuted long before The Truman Show, in 1992. But whether it actually predicted the sudden (and lasting) popularity of orchestrated realism, or simply capitalized on it, consider this: in 2003, Spike aired The Joe Schmo Show, which featured a regular guy tricked into competing on a completely fake reality show. Unlike Truman, Matt Gould could see the cameras, but all of the other contestants were paid actors, playing the part of various reality-show stereotypes. While Matt eventually got all of the prizes in the rigged contest, the show's central running joke was in the same existential ballpark as The Truman Show.
MISSESWeather Machine: Dissecting the plausibility of an extended parable is an exercise in missing the point, but producing a hurricane on demand to keep Truman from leaving his fictional town is still pretty hard to swallow.

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8 of 10

3. The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2)

Released: 1981 | Set in the year: Unspecified
In Mad Max, the world—or Australia, at least—was in trouble. Society seemed to be crumbling, and marauding gangs were winning the war against law enforcement. In the opening montage in The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2), we find out why. Oil shortages had led to global war, and the vaguely dystopic setting in the first movie was a paradise compared to the dusty post-apocalypse of the sequel. Mel Gibson's lonesome drifter helps a compound of survivors under siege from a small army of bandits sporting leather jockstraps for masks and lots of crossbow bolts. At stake—the compound's vast and enviable fuel reserves. The end of the world, it seems, is a sprint to decide who can consume the very last drop of oil. Which is why, despite the bizarre cast of characters and outlandish setting, it's hard to shake the feeling that The Road Warrior could happen, or at least start to happen, any day now.
HITSResource Wars: Not everyone agrees that oil is running out. But it's hard to dispute the skyrocketing price of crude. The extent of the current crisis has yet to be defined, but nations are scrambling to find new sources of oil, and to develop alternative power generation. A report commissioned by the Department of Defense in 2003 warned of the potential for military conflict over dwindling resources, and British Defense Secretary John Reid made a similar prediction in a 2006 speech. Some experts claim that resource wars are already here, pointing to the potential impact of water shortages on the conflict in Darfur. And all political hand-wringing aside, if you live in Somalia, or Darfur, The Road Warrior seems a lot like everyday life. With roving warlords, the constant threat of violence, and a society in tatters, the only thing that's missing is a hero. Because in the real world, no one's really coming to the rescue.
MISSESFlamethrowers: This is a minor gripe, but if all fuel production has ground to a halt, would anyone, even the fuel-rich compounders, bother to use flamethrowers? Or are flamethrowers the flamboyant, post-apocalyptic equivalent of driving a stretch Hummer?

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9 of 10

2. Minority Report

Released: 2002 | Set in the year: 2054
Back in the hoary old days of Tom Cruise's superstardom, Minority Report was just another box office home run. The story was neo-noir, with a detective on the run for a murder he hasn't yet committed. But the convoluted plot line, full of psychic visions and nonpsychic betrayals, isn't what most people remember about this movie. They remember that scene where Cruise whips through images and data with his hands, and the creepy holographic ads that yelp from cereal boxes and greet you by name at the Gap. Minority Report is a vision of a sleek future that feels plausible, full of believable-looking gadgets and essentially free of all violent crime. The pushy ads and unnerving psychics are just part of the package.
HITSDisplay Technology: When we first saw Microsoft's innovative multitouch interface, Surface, I said what everyone says. "It's just like Minority Report." And it's what people say about Jeff Han's larger, wall-mounted touchscreens, watching him deftly shuffle through windows with his fingers. Microsoft is fine with the association-Han is not. He points out that, since Cruise's character is dealing with holographic images floating around himself, the interface lacks the tactile feedback of tapping and sliding your hands across a screen. That might be the case, but between Han, Microsoft and the iPhone, touch-based computing is here to stay. And 3D displays, which were a key trend at this year's Consumer Electronics Show>, are also on the verge of commercial viability. I'm not predicting a holographic, gesture-controlled computer in the near future, or even the less sophisticated holographic ads and camcorder footage that shows up in the movie. But if Surface is already available in 2008, it's hard to imagine that we'll be using mice and 2D monitors in 2054.
Self-Driving Cars: Adaptive braking and autonomous cruise control are already a reality for luxury cars. So in nearly 50 years, will cars reach full autonomy? Scientists and automakers would argue that a driverless world is a significantly safer and less congested one, and that incremental improvements will eventually add up to robotic chauffeurs. The head of Stanford's DARPA Urban Challenge team, which placed second in the driverless race, predicts self-driven cars by 2030. That deadline might feel a little tight, but 2054 is much more forgiving.
MISSESPrecognition: Without getting into a debate about whether psychic powers exist, here are some facts. Parapsychology has all but disappeared from academia in the United States, and is on a downward slide overseas. There is no significant government funding for any experiments related to psychic phenomenon. In other words, whatever you may or may not believe, state-sponsored precognition doesn't exist. To assume that the next two decades will see a sudden breakthrough in observable psychic ability, as well as the bureaucratic and budgetary momentum to install those psychics as part of a crime-prevention initiative, is about as far-fetched as believing that future presidential administrations will start relying on Ouija boards.
Maglev Cars: Self-driving cars make sense. But magnetically levitating cars that climb buildings? It makes for a swell video-game-ish action scene, but has little to do with actual maglev technology, which is progressing at a glacial pace.
UNDECIDEDJet Packs: It's a sad fact of life, but the jet-pack industry is a phantom market. That could change, however, if enough people risk their incredibly rich and/or stupid lives in the coming years to allow jet-pack makers to improve on the basic design. So if jet packs were to, pun intended, take off right this minute, or within the next couple of years, it's possible that by 2054 they would be fuel-efficient enough to stay airborne as long as the ones in this movie, and light enough to not blow your ACL every time you land. It probably won't happen, but it could. And we all want it to, so it should.
Iris Scans: The mandatory, frequent iris scans, which serve as a security tool as well as a marketing one (the Gap holo-greeter has specific suggestions for Cruise's characters, based on the shopping history associated with his eyeballs) are completely feasible, given the increasing high-tech scrutiny of Americans. However, its more likely that the technology will have at least some failure rate, similar to tag-detection systems at retail stores, acting more as an aid to security personnel than a self-contained security measure.
E-Paper: The wirelessly updated e-paper newspapers are considerably prettier and more flexible than the Kindle, but that technology could easily become commonplace within the movie's timeline. But if holographic technology is as advanced as it appears to be, why bother with any tangible display surface?

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10 of 10

1. Gattaca

Released: 1997 | Set in the year: Unspecified
The mark of a truly prescient sci-fi film is when, after stumbling over a lengthy description of the complex moral dimensions surrounding a given topic, you realize you've been wasting your time. "Oh, right. It's like Gattaca." Since this slow-burn cult classic was released, the murky bioethics of genetic profiling have snapped into focus. Relegated to the status of "in-valid" due to a subpar DNA profile, Ethan Hawke's protagonist sets up a complicated identity-swapping scheme to secure a spot as an astronaut. The technology on display in the movie is still years away, but the central message—that genetic oppression can become institutionalized before anyone notices—is increasingly relevant. I should also point out that the writer and director of Gattaca, Andrew Niccol, wrote the screenplay for one of my other picks, The Truman Show. It's not that I'm a Niccol groupie, but he seems to have a knack for getting to some of the biggest issues of our time, just barely ahead of schedule.
HITSGenetic Profiling: The fear factor has been working the edges for years: Will the babies of tomorrow be selectively bred for certain traits? Is eliminating Down syndrome worth the ethical dilemma of allowing parents to choose their child's gender? Still, what Gattaca poses is an even more plausible crisis: If we can use genes to find out who's biologically suited to specific tasks, and to calculate estimated life spans for every newborn, how would that reorganize our society? If, for example, we knew that the odds were against a given presidential candidate to survive a single term in office, would anyone vote for him or her? And, as British authorities have recently proposed, if we can identify the genes associated with criminal behavior, why not test every single child, and create a pre-emptive database of would-be offenders? Genetic profiling can clearly be abused, but it could also save lives. Scientists are currently working to identify which genes indicate an increased chance of weight gain, which could help fend off obesity for future generations. But is it worth the risk of saddling whole segments of the population with the stigma of the dreaded "fat" gene? Genetic engineering is still centuries away, but the opportunity to decimate free will, by way of well-intentioned genetic early warnings, has already arrived.
UNDECIDEDManned Exploration: Since Gattaca isn't set in a particular time, there's no way to gauge the plausibility of the protagonist's dream, which is to get his genetically inferior, possibly short-lived self into space. His first assignment is to reach Titan, one of Saturn's moons, which would set this movie way into the future. But since there are no pop-culture references, and everything is so perfectly fascist and minimal, Gattaca is adrift in its own timeline. It's wherever you want it to be, which is one of the reasons it's so successful in its sci-fi ambitions.

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